A radiant smile lit up her face with such a curve of red lips, and flash of white teeth, that the spectator might well have been infected by its wholesome sweetness into an answering look. Major Marsden's eyes, however, only narrowed with perplexed enquiry as he said bluntly, "Yes, slightly." "Then perhaps father sent you to fetch me?" This time he relaxed; confidence is catching. "I'm afraid not; but possibly if he had known I was to be here he might. At all events I can make myself useful." "How?" "I can get you a _gharri_--that is a carriage--and start you for Faizapore. It is sixty miles from here as you know." She bent down to pick up her rugs. "I did not know. You see I expected father." Philip Marsden felt impelled to consolation. "He has been delayed. Most likely there has been"--in his haste to put forward a solid excuse he was just about to say "an accident," but floundered instead into a bald "something to detain him." "There generally _is_ something to detain one in every delay, isn't there?" she asked dryly; adding hastily, "but it is very kind of you to help. You see I have only just arrived in India, so I am quite a stranger." "People generally _are_ strangers when they first arrive in a new country aren't they?" retorted her companion grimly. Then as his eyes met her smiling ones, he smiled too and asked with a kinder ring in his voice, if there were anything else he could do for her. "I'm _so_ hungry," she said simply. "Couldn't you take me to get breakfast somewhere? I don't see a refreshment-room, and I hate going by myself." "There is the _dâk_ bungalow, but," he hesitated for an instant and stood looking at her, as if making up his mind about something; then calling some coolies he bade them take up the luggage. "This way please, Miss Stuart; you will have to walk about half a mile, but you won't mind that either, I expect." In reply she launched out, as they went along the dusty road, into girlish chatter about the distances she could go without fatigue, the country life at home which seemed so very far off now, and the new existence on which she was just entering. "You are not in the least like your sisters," he said suddenly. She laughed. "They aren't my real sisters, you see. Father married again, and they are my stepmother's children. There are five of them--three girls and two boys, besides Charlie who is only six years old--but then he is my brother--my half-brother I mean. It's very funny, isn't it? to have so many brothers and a mother one has never seen. But of course I have their photographs."